When I was young (around 10-12 years old) my fathers parents would take me to Fox Lake for a weekend twice a summer to my great-grandmothers house to give my parents a break. It was always fun as my great-grandmother was in her 90's at the time, highly active, and sharp as a tack. This meant great conversations and even better stories!

There was another reason for loving to visit. You see, she lived on a dead end road, right along the bank of Fox Lake. That, of course, meant plenty of fishing had to take place! Almoat always under the tutoring of my grandfather.

There was one summer, one after noon, and one particular moment I will never forget, when my grandfather had gone inside for a break. While walking down the bank (fishing from the bank) I would witness something incredible that I would not speak of for about 10 years.

Understand that the bank where I was fishing also went into a creek, about 50 yards across. The mouth of the creek across from me was heavily filled with cat tails which were very tall (dont know how tall, I was 10ish) and my side thoroughly choked with lilly pads.

While casting and retreaving a red-devil (didnt work so well with all the lillies) I heard a commotion over beyond the cat tails. I stopped and watched for a few seconds when a massive bird took off and cleared the cat tails flying off and away from the creek mouth/lake.

Now, big bird, so what? Right? Well, when I say it was huge, I mean HUGE! Its wings were easily the span of a average sized pontoon docked about 50 yards up the lake bank from where the bird took flight.

It struck terror in me in a bad way for a few minutes, and even after it was well gone I was frozen in shock. I never told anyone there what I saw because, well lets be honest, who would have believed it was anything but a childs overactive imagination?

It wouldnt be until about 10 years later, on the History Channel, that I would find out what I saw. Apparently sighting of ThunderBirds (or Roc's) date back there to the 1600's by European explorers and even earlier by native Americans. I just never knew the name of what I saw except "big f*$&%@+ bird!"

Sorry for such a long story...

__________________
“Let it not be said that no one cared, that no one objected once it’s realized that our liberties and wealth are in jeopardy.”
---Ron Paul

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it."
---Dr. Martin Luther King

"If you think we are free today, you know nothing about tyranny and even less about freedom."
---Tom Braun

Driving through the country sometimes I will see little old ones on my way to here or there. I always make it a point to stop, pay my respects, and look around.

My Mother and I would often go on treks to old graveyards. We would read the headstones and speculate about the lives of those people. Often, we would notice many deaths in a certain year and wonder if a flu or something swept through the town at that time. We would also notice young women buried with their babies and know that the woman and child probably died during childbirth.
We never experienced anything unexplained but I would sometimes feel like I was 'getting involved' in other people's lives. I STILL love old cemeteries. Where I live, there are several old family cemeteries on farmland that the owners don't mind if you go browsing through there.

__________________Honor Student: School of Hard KnocksTo the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.Quando Omni Flunkus Moritatus